Looks like my new improved weather shield is working just fine (I never admited to owning the original shield by the way, I just passed it off as magic). I recently upgraded my equipment to handle most of the northeast portion of the US as I figure the mid-Atlantic and southern states need more snow handling experience. I have seen the Day After Tomorrow after all. Not all the time mind you as the northeast needs the occasional snow storm just to make sure the wells are nice and full in Spring.

Unfortunately, since my upgraded weather shield requires significantly more amperage, my direct power tap into the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant seems to have weakened the reactor cooling piping a bit and ground water tritium levels are on the rise again. My own fault for tying into a nuclear plant that was built in 1975 I suppose.

I guess I’m going to have to poll the folks down in Vernon, VT to get an idea what they would rather prefer–more snow or the possibility of hooking a 3 headed trout next summer?

In 2006, 28 percent of teens ages 12 to 17 and young adults ages 18 to 29 were bloggers, according to survey results released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. By the fall of 2009, however, these numbers dropped to 14 percent of teens and 15 percent of young adults. During the same period, the percentage of online adults over 30 who are blogging rose from 7 percent in 2006 to 11 percent in 2009.

See? Us old(er) folks are gaining while the younger crowd head elsewhere. According to the article, that “elsewhere” is Facebook and MySpace but they don’t seem to care for Twitter. I have to give them some credit for that anyway.

You see, somewhere back in my distant blogging past I remember a plethora of complaints opinions from the older blogging crowd about the quality of the content written by the (much) younger crowd. Like the entire lack of it. I even remember some wishing they’d just go away.

Of course some of the older crowd has always been wishing they’d just go away since the very first child on this planet hit 13.

Now I’m not saying I was one of those who thought that bloggers who were in their teens and early twenties should just go away. I’m more of an equal blogging opportunity type of guy when it comes to things like that so I really didn’t have a problem with the (much) younger blogging crowd. As long as they stayed on Blogger it was fine with me.

Besides, I figured that if a youngster could manage to setup his/her own DYI WordPress blog then they deserved to be there quality content or no.

There were always exceptions to the rule of course but they were pretty much few and far between.

So there it is folks. The elders, who are often left behind in every other way shape and form these days (and the other days as well), are actually gaining on the younger set in the art of blogging. At this rate I figure we’ll have the house majority by 2012, yes?

Now just to be clear on things, I have watched this woman’s antics ever since it was first announced that she had been picked as John McCain’s running mate (Sarah who?). Being a reasonable man I decided to give this lady the benefit of the doubt until she removed all doubt, etc, etc.

Well, she did–remove all doubt that is. I’m sorry but the woman is clueless. Not only is she clueless but she’s dangerous as well in that she’s causing all sorts of things to happen–all the wrong things. But this time it’s personal.

Because of her I had a comment banned from USA Today on that very same article. Why? Because I dared use the word ‘retarded’ in my comment even though earlier comments had also included the word ‘retarded’. Sometime during the first comment that used the word and my comment, USA Today decided to flag the word ‘retarded’ as inappropriate as per their comment policy.

This was one of the first comments on the article:

Retarded is a word that has absolutely nothing to do with those challenged mentally or physically. Do Republicans ever take a break from being upset by anything a Democrat say??

Now this was my second comment that was much later in the stack:

I had to substitute an ‘*’ for the ‘r’ in ‘*etarded’ in my previous comment (as the word refers to the timing of an engine) due to it being flagged as inappropriate by USA Today’s comment policy.

Uh-huh. Better tell all mechanics at my local auto garage not to use that word anymore (despite the fact that there isn’t any other word for it, mind you). Otherwise they might be sued?

My first comment, the one concerning engine timing, seems to have gone missing.

This means, and I’ll say it again, that somewhere between the first comment above and my first comment, USA Today changed their comment policy to include the word ‘retarded’ as inappropriate.

The real problem I see here is that Rahm Emanuel’s use of the word had nothing to do with folks who are mentally or physically impaired (or is it challenged now, I forget). He used it in reference to an idea that came up in some sort of weekly strategy session he had walked into. And he didn’t say the idea was retarded, he said it was F****ing retarded (just to keep things in perspective). To wit:

The friction was laid bare in August when Mr. Emanuel showed up at a weekly strategy session featuring liberal groups and White House aides. Some attendees said they were planning to air ads attacking conservative Democrats who were balking at Mr. Obama’s health-care overhaul.

“F—ing retarded,” Mr. Emanuel scolded the group, according to several participants. He warned them not to alienate lawmakers whose votes would be needed on health care and other top legislative items.

WSJ article

And what makes the whole ridiculous issue even more of a farce is that the Chief of Staff had said this behind closed doors, not in public–and back in August! This means that one or more of the attendees of the weekly strategy session had finally managed to complain to the press about how the Chief of Staff had called their idea “F***ing retarded”.

Nice to know our government employs adults, isn’t it?

Okay, maybe old Rahm could have been a bit more “politic” about his choice of descriptive adjectives but hey, maybe he’d had a bad day or something. Who knows? It happens.

The point is that ol’ Palin just had to jump up on that soapbox she carries around with her (which she stores alongside the chip she keeps on her shoulder) and yell and holler about how it demeans the mentally impaired and blah, blah, blah, etc, etc, etc, when she was the one who made the comparison in the first place.

Well, fine then.

You would think that all her bellyaching wouldn’t have an affect on my personal browsing/commenting experience now would you? I mean, from the very first moment I went online so many years ago through to present I’ve never had a comment flagged as ‘inappropriate’–ever.

I have now though. Thanks, Sarah.

That’s all there is to it.

I’m not posting today. I didn’t post yesterday and I may not post tomorrow.

You see, the day before yesterday I began working on an old Dell Inspiron 1300 laptop. An underpowered laptop that was known to be plagued with problems once old age set in (about 3 years by what I read). And the morning of the day I was going to start work on it my brain simply refused to get out of bed.

And it’s still there.

Apparently it wanted nothing whatsoever to to with that “old piece of sh…” Well, let’s just say it wanted nothing to do with it.

Now I have to admit that I’m finding it rather difficult to write up a post on any subject at all these days even when my brain is ensconced within my head where it belongs but attempting to write while my recalcitrant brain still remains stubbornly in bed is downright impossible.

So I’m not going to post today.

I just wanted to let you know.

Edit: I was not going to post about an hour or so ago but then I found out my server had gone into cardiac arrest. I notified my host who notified the technicians who notified the advanced technicians who finally notified the Admin who brought in a portable defibrillator and (Clear!) solved the problem.

So now it’s taken me a lot longer than I planned to not post.

I’m going to bed now. This not posting is wearing on a body.

It’s a better day today though. I get to beat on someone else’s laptop. I always enjoy doing this especially when I get blanket permission from the victim owner to do whatever to takes to make it all better. In this case the laptop in question is a 5 year old Dell with Windows XP installed that was bought from a local hardware store.

A hardware store?

Yes, it belongs to an average user who bought it from a hardware store that has a guy who works out of some back room selling Dell computers (sales and service type of thing I guess). The owner does have the knowledge to defrag the drive occasionally but trusted the guy she bought it from for everything else. Including the belief that the McAfee anti-virus suite was good forever and ever which, of course, went away 6 months after it was purchased.

Amazingly enough it still (mostly) functions.

Now let’s see, hammer, chisel, screwdrivers, 3 types of saws, jewelers files, drill…yup, I think I’m ready. Hope this thing is insured.